RESEARCH: Summary of Mulvey's Theory

Laura Mulvey says 'The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure which is styled accordingly'. By this, she means that in music videos, females are used as sexual objects towards men. They style women according to what they want to see and what they think other men will want to see. Not only do they style them with what you can call inappropriate clothing, they also use camera work to catch male's attention. 

In Beyonce's video 'Baby Boy', we see that she is in very little clothes. This close up shows her belly and reveals a little of her clothes which seem to be quite feminine and little. Laura Mulvey would say that this is for the male gaze and that this is what males want to see.  

 In Justin Timberlake's song 'Senhorita', there is a lot of what Laura Mulvey talks about. This would be an example of Laura Mulvey's idea of women being dismembered in music videos. They are not looked at as a whole, but are focused on for certain parts of their bodies. In this scene, we can see a woman's intimate area as well as parts of her legs. She is wearing minimal clothing and as we can see, Justin Timberlake is very covered in the background making her legs the focus. 

Rihanna's videos are usually quite explicit and she is usually wearing minimal clothing. In this scene, we can see that she is wearing very little clothing and her pose is quite provocative. This shot is specifically used to target men and in Laura Mulvey's terms, there is a 'sexual imbalance' where men usually have all the power.